[306] draws near, there arises again a desire which I felt when she
died, the desire, not indeed to take a critical survey of her,--very far
from it. I feel no inclination at all to go regularly through her
productions, to classify and value them one by one, to pick out from
them what the English public may most like, or to present to that
public, for the most part ignorant of George Sand and for the most part
indifferent to her, a full history and a judicial estimate of the woman
and of her writings. But I desire to recall to my own mind, before the
occasion offered by her death passes quite away,--to recall and collect
the elements of that powerful total-impression which, as a writer, she
made upon me; to recall and collect them, to bring them distinctly into
view, to feel them in all their depth and power once more. What I here
attempt is not for the benefit of the indifferent; it is for my own
satisfaction, it is for myself. But perhaps those for whom George Sand
has been a friend and a power will find an interest in following me.

_Le sentiment de la vie ideale, qui n'est autre que la vie normale telle
que nous sommes appeles a la connaitre_;[307]--"the sentiment of the
ideal life, which is none other than man's normal life as we shall some
day know it,"--those words from one of her last publications give the
ruling thought of George Sand, the ground-_motive_, as they say in
music, of all her strain. It is as a personage inspired by this motive
that she interests us.

The English public conceives of her as of a novel-writer who wrote
stories more or less interesting; the earlier ones objectionable and
dangerous, the later ones, some of them, unexceptionable and fit to be
put into the hands of the youth of both sexes. With such a conception of
George Sand, a story of hers like _Consuelo_[308] comes to be elevated
in England into quite an undue relative importance, and to pass with
very many people for her typical work, displaying all that is really
valuable and significant in the author. _Consuelo_ is a charming story.
But George Sand is something more than a maker of charming stories, and
only a portion of her is shown in _Consuelo_. She is more, likewise,
than a creator of characters. She has created, with admirable truth to
nature, characters most attractive and attaching, such as Edmee,
Genevieve, Germain.[309] But she is not adequately expressed by them.
We do not know her unless we feel the spirit which goes t